NORTHUMBRIA UNIVERSITY N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 9 C O N T A C T U S : Training: [email protected] Helpline: [email protected] Newsletter: [email protected] I S S U E 2 0 I N S I D E T H I S I S S U E : Programmes with no formal award or criteria only 1 Customer Support Helpdesk 1
Did you know….? 1 SITS Availability 2 New Training Facilities
2
Diet and Module Availability Rollover 2 November Training Schedule 2 December Training Schedule 2 November Tasks 3 December Tasks 3 Hints & Tips 3 Work in Progress 3 UCAS Cycle Changeover; October 4 Course Transfers 4 SRE (student Re-enrolment) 4 SITS STATS 4
Process for Late Awards
5
For those students who are undertaking credit bearing modules at Northumbria, the student intended award should be CRED
(University Credits) and the Course Progression Profile on the CBO for the final
stage of the programme should be NO AWD. Run the first part of CSP as normal. This will generate a recommended outcome of COMP (Course Complete no Formal Award) and also generate a SAW record. Then run the second part of CSP and agree the COMP outcome and the award of CRED.
Programmes with no formal award or credit only
The procedure for those students who are enrolled at Northumbria but do not get a formal award on the completion of their programme is as follows:
Customer Support Helpdesk…...
will not be available on Wednesday 16th December due to staff attending the Academic Registry Away Day
Please log all calls with IT Helpline in the usual way.
Did you know....?
the New Programme Approvals form, the PF-02, has been updated. We’ve amended the form to enable us to capture more information with regard to progression and awards.
This information is vital to ensure that the correct codes are set up in SITS to enable the progression processes to run smoothly.
Additionally each form submitted must be signed by the School Registrar - or at least e-mailed to us from the School Registrar.
The new version of the form is now on the University website along with a copy of the Guidelines for Completion.
For those students who do not undertake modules at Northumbria but who are required to be enrolled on the system, the procedure is exactly the same as above except that the student intended award should be NO AWD (No formal award). Although this means a student will end up having an agreed award record that says
No Formal Award which is slightly contradictory, the award record needs to
be there and agreed in order to close the record properly for HESA purposes.
What do you get when you cross a snowman and a vampire?
Frostbite!
SITS Update
P A G E 2
6th Good Housekeepers Training 10th Basic Training
12th Module Diets and Scheduling 13th Administering Student Records
All requests for training should be initiated by the School Registrar or Service Director and forwarded to Cate Watson. Please note PGR training will then be collated by the Graduate School Office who will also attend the training. For further information on any training sessions please refer to the Academic Registry SITS Website. Here you can also find all of the up-to-date SITS training manuals, SITS glossary and available reports.
December Training Schedule
8th Creating Online Option Selection
I S S U E 1 9
SITS Availability
SITS will be unavailable on 3 November whilst the system is upgraded to the latest version of the software. This will affect both Client Server and e:Vision. The Training and Test databases are also being upgraded and will be out of use sometime during 3 and 4 November.The Customer Support and Training Helpdesk will be closed during this time, although calls may still be logged in the same way via the IT Helpline. These will be picked up as soon as the system is back online. The system will be restored as soon as the work is completed and the upgrade successfully tested. This is unlikely to be until the morning of 4 November.
On 14 December all existing active diets (course structures) and MAVs (module availabilities) will be rolled forward to the next academic year (2010/1). This will facilitate both the attaching of diets to the spanning students at the beginning of January, and the production of course structures for the university Website. As both these involve records for the next academic year, it is important that all existing records are checked and correct.
Of particular importance are the 2010/1 part of spanning 2009/0 MAV records, and the actual set up of the spanning diets. If these do not exist or are set up incorrectly at the point the diets are attached to the students, then some or all of the module will be missing. This affects not only the student next academic year, but also the funding stream for that student record.
Remember, this is the only time records are rolled over. If you create any new diets or MAVs after this date, you will also need to replicate them for next year as well.
Spanning diets for 2009/0 will also be centrally marked out of use and the next year records turned on. Remember all other diets will need turning on and off in Schools at the appropriate times, or the wrong diet will attach to students automatically.
Diet and Module Availability
Rollover
New Training Facilities
SITS training will now take place in the newly refurbished Staff IT Training Suite which is located in Squires Building. The suite comprises of two rooms, 203 and 204, which are located next to each other on the second floor. These
rooms will also be used for MARCET and SAP training. Water will continue to be available for all SITS sessions.
What kind of music do elves like best?
Wrap music!
All scheduled SITS Training sessions are now listed within the SITS area of the university website on the SITS Training Events page. The url for this page is http://www.northumbria.ac.uk/ s d / c e n t r a l / a r / s y r p / e v e n t s / ? view=Standard
November 2009
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
Developments currently under way include:
Import of marks from Gradebook Review of user access rights
Home Office Points Based System integration – phase 2 Change of Circumstance form changes
Investigation of PGT Online Applications STT – new training and evaluation software
Major review/rewrite of business processes in automation and tasking
New workshops for course documentation New document Manager upload functionality
I S S U E 1 9 P A G E 3
Work in Progress
There are various tasks to be undertaken in November and December. Schools should be:
Ensuring all students are enrolled and have the correct 2009/0 modules attached to secure HEFCE funding (by 27 November)
Ensuring no students have more than one active SCE record for this year, and that is it for the correct course/block (by 27 November)
Auditing assessment patterns and mark schemes ready for marks entry Checking all audits relating to HESES (by 27 November)
December 2009
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
Creating and checking 2009/0 MAVs ready for rollover (by 11 December)
Ensuring all live spanning and online diets are ready to be attached (by 11 December) Checking all progression queries and audits are checked and correct
Checking MAPs and MABs and creating all SMRs ready for January exams (by 24 December)
December Tasks
November Tasks
Remember if you change a mark you must re-run the student back through CSP or they will have the wrong level average.
If athletes get athletes foot, what to elves get?
Mistle-toes!
Hints &
Tips
I S S U E 1 9 P A G E 4 Enrolment 283 Marks Entry 23 Modules 14 Other issue 40 PGR 16
SITS STATS
Printing 5Progression & Awards 245
Reporting 27
Student Record 660
Training 6
UCAS Cycle Changeover, October
Following a successful changeover eleven working days earlier than last year, SITS Admissions users are now processing UCAS applications for the 2010/11 cycle via ODBC-Link.
Users should be aware of the knock-on effect that any Direct applications set up on SITS using QAS/QSS will have id’s automatically created with a 2010 prefix unless overridden by the user.
Access 35
Admissions 3
CBO 5
Congregations 2
Diets 7
In August & September we handled 1371 calls, including calls related to:
Did you Know:
Students with no fee status on SCE are excluded from the HESA and HESES return? That means we get no
money for the student
Note
The Schedule of Key Dates for Semester 2 2009/10 is now available via the following link http://www.northumbria.ac.uk/sd/central/ar/ spa/dates/
Course Transfers
Must be actioned within the same academic year and on the most current record (if no current record exists you must CSP to create one)
CBO must exist for both courses (if it doesn’t, advise your learning and teaching team)
Course must be in use (if not please advise your learning and teaching team)
Student records must be active (SCJ/SPR status C) Enter course/programme code that the record is transferring to in task
Ensure there are no Reason codes (RFT) in SWD (remove if they exist)
Cannot be used for block/occurrence changes (use CBO change task in e-vision)
Do not change the student record statuses (these change when the automation is processed)
Do not enter an end date in SCJ (this changes when processed)
Not to be used for route changes (there is a separate task for route changes in e-vision)
SRE (student Re-enrolment)
When do I request an SRE on a student record via the Help desk?
If the student is repeating a stage.
Student is changing occurrences and has attended the existing occurrence.
This task is NOT used for progression. If a record has not progressed to the current academic year, you will need to use CSP.
When do I use the new CBO change task in e-vision?
(This must be actioned within the same academic year and on the record that is to be IV’d) Student is changing block and the existing block is incorrect.
Student is changing occurrence and the existing occurrence is incorrect.
Do NOT use this process for Progression.
What did one Snowman say to the other snowman?
Process for Late Awards
Background
The University academic year is based on the HESA (Higher Education Statistics Agency) academic year, to whom we are obliged to provide information in relation to our students. HESA issue external deadlines on this information for all Institutions, and these in turn inform other processes such as the DLHE (Destination of Leavers in Higher Education) and NSS (National Student Survey). This information is based entirely on the students live enrolment record for that particular year.
Once this information has been submitted, we cannot retrospectively add to that data. Any subsequent changes to a student record must be recorded against their next enrolment record in order for the data to be updated by HESA.
One of the issues this creates is when late decisions or changes are made regarding student awards. A student with no award at the time of the extract means HESA believe that the student is still at the Institution and has not yet obtained an award. If the award is then created against this original record, which is never resubmitted to HESA, they have no way of knowing that this student has successfully completed (or failed) their programme. This affects our completion rates and leaves students with no outcome as far as HESA are concerned.
Additionally, Corporate Planning maintain our own internal statistics regarding student progress and awards, and this can also be affected by adding retrospective decisions to historic records.
Agreed Process
Following discussions with HESA and Financial Planning, any decisions made after the published deadlines should be recorded as follows. Please ensure this is done in the order specified, or you will create a new award record for the wrong year:
1. The ‘Award Year’ in SPR should be amended to reflect/match the new current SCE (academic) year (2009/10)
2. If an award (SAW) record already exists, a request for its deletion should be sent to the Helpdesk. Until this has been deleted, no further action should be taken.
3. A new enrolment record for the current academic year should be created, if it does not already exist. Please check before creating. To create, the student should be run through progression (CSP) as continuing at same level (CONT), and the ‘next’ records in CSP completed/amended to ensure they reflect this.
4. Normal progression (CSP) should then be run, ensuring it is against the new, current SCE record, and the decision Input and agreed.
The following actions should then all take place in SWD:
1. The new SCE status should be amended to dormant (DO)
2. The mode of attendance on the new SCE should be changed to Dormant (63 if previously full time, or 64 if previously part time)
3. The student load on the new SCE should be amended to zero
4. The ‘end date’ (please note NOT expected end date) on SCJ should be amended to 1 August (first day of the current academic year)
The same process should be followed in the case of a student who has failed, where applicable.
The progression will trigger the automation, which will subsequently be run for these students centrally and the records closed as normal
I S S U E 1 9 P A G E 5
What do you get when you cross a snowman with a baker?
